Over 40s

[CarolineP]

Yasmina

As you progress in the schedule, DS should sleep longer between feeds and therefore be more awake at feed time.

For breast feeding, Gina Ford recommends that you feed for approx 20 -25 minutes on one side and then wind and change nappy before given approx 10-15 minutes on the other side.

My DD would sleep longer, for example after the morning feed the book recommends putting baby to sleep at 9.00am, my DD was always asleep by 8.15 and was ready to be awake by 10.30 for the next feed.

Its very hard to get the balance of feed and sleep correct, they are so interconnected. In my experience the more milk you can get inside them the more they sleep.

There were occasions when I had to wake up DD for a feed and although it seemed cruel at the time, it did keep her on schedule, which had a positive effect in the long run.

I have given away my Gina Ford book (I know, how stupid was that), but I have attached a link to her website which might throw up some more pearls of wisdom.

http://www.contentedbaby.com/index.htm

Regards
CarolineP

[children]

Hi Carolyn,

I was going to check out local book store for Gina Ford's book this weekend but tied up by so many dif things. I checked the website yet all the useful information was protected and I did not feel like paying 60 pounds to be a member.

DS eats and sleeps better ever since he got over the cold - poor him, he was so congested for so long. I also found out the more he eats, the longer he sleeps, except I rarely can keep him stay on the breast for longer than 20 min. He often sucks very strongly to get himself chocked! Silly him, never learns. I have to pat him on the back sometimes and ask him to slow down. That helps, but in the mean time, puts him to sleep. BTW, this little guy loves diaper changing, for some strange reason though, that does not wake him up unless he is awake at begin with, in which case, he laughs, WITH GIGGLE SOUND!

Thanks for sharing!

Yasmina

[Catharine]

Hey Yasmina and Caroline-
I bought both the Gina Ford books the contented little baby and her sleep book, from Amazon.com as the bookstores here didn't carry her.

Also, I'm not as strict on the schedule as she advises. That's just because it doesn't work out necessarily for us since DH is the care giver on Tue and Thur mornings. But we try to be as within a small window to maintain her on a good schedule if that makes any sense. Somedays [like today] DD just doesn't want to nap. She is just so amazed with everything and wants to absorb all the information. I put her in her crib and she crys hard for about 10m before drifting off to never neverland, but on days like today she's only there for a short visit, 30m before awaking and wanting more input. Please don't take this as a complaint, then the reality in the evening on ddays such as today is that she drifts off to sleep a wee bit earlier than normal and sleeps through the night soundly. SO we have a bit of flexibility in what we've been doing and it's been working for us. DD seems to be a contented baby, many strangers seem to think so anyways.


okay I can not resist putting a few pix up.





Ladies take care.
Catharine

[children]

Catharine,

What a lovely surprise! I like to end my week by seeing your beautiful daughter. She is so adorable! She has grown quite a lot and love love her little arms and legs!!!

DD sleeps with her butt up in the air too, it is funny. She is so active and strong now. Last night she nearly killed me by falling right on my right breast while jumping on the sofa.

DS is again congested and I am also congested myself. Now he again wakes up 2~3 times per night. I blame on DD who brought all sorts of germs from her school to home. Poor DS just have to live with it since she often kisses him right after she gets home every night.

Thanks, I just ordered few Gina Ford's books from Amazon site. Somehow I had thought you could only get them by amazon.co.uk, silly me.


Hi to everyone who reads here, have a nice weekend.

Yasmina

[teachertam]

Hello Ladies:

Catharine: Your daughter is adorable!! She has very big eyes. It is good to hear that you are getting DD on a schedule. Andrew seems to do better if he is on a schedule.

Yasmina: Sorry to hear that you and DS are sick. Hopefully, you will both be feeling better soon.

Hello Caroline.

As for me, DS seems to be going through a period of separation anxiety. He never did this when he was younger, just after he turned 2. He screamed and clung to my leg when I had to leave the other day to go to school. My MIL was there to watch him and he loves spending time with her. It broke my heart to leave him. DH came home 1 hour after I had left and said that Andrew had quit crying right after I pulled away from the house. Little rascal knows how to manipulate me.

Take care,
Tammy

[Catharine]

TGIF

Happy Friday ladies!

Thank you all for the lovely compliments on DD. She's quite the camera ham

Tammy-your separation anxiety story is funny and sad all at once. I feel for you. I'm not certain how I'll react when I reach that bridge. We have used our niece as a sitter several times over the past couple of months. Thankfully I don't see the crying, but it does occur when DD realizes her mama and papa are no where to be seen or heard. I can only imagine what goes through her mind. I hope you DS grows out of this 'phase/stage' quickly.

Yasmina-ouch, perhaps your DD will be a little gymnast with all the jumping activity

Caroline-your advice and wisdom have been priceless for us. Thank you. Friends and family keep warning us that soon DD will be teething and our blissful world will come to a screaching halt. I'm hoping that following the Gina Ford method will prove them wrong. Gina says if we can keep her on the feed and sleep schedule we should not have too many problems. Crossed fingers.

DD has been very active lately. She is able to sit for long periods if I put her in that position. She's a little inch worm as well, moving around the floor and her crib, sometimes getting caught in tight quarters. I think she may turn out to be a swimmer as she loves bath time and splashing the water with her flutter kicks. She's really digging mastering her cause and effect routines right now.

Thank ya'll for such wonderful advice.

Update on my quest for the pre=pg body. I entered a fitness contest 5.5 weeks ago. I'm 10 lbs from my goal weight with 6.5 weeks left in the challenge. The best news is I'm back in the pre-pg wardrobe. Yippeee! and I'm back on the soccer pitch another goal met. DH and DD are my biggest fans. There are several babies and toddlers cheering for their mommies on the sidelines, very cute. So DH and DD have made some new friends Soon my football season will begin [gaelic football] so the fitness challenge really also is a vehicle for me to gain back my endurance/speed/agility for this up coming season. Making the time to work on that has definitely been a challenge since I find myself wanting to spend the time with DD rather than getting back into match shape. I have 10 weeks till the first football match I better figure it out fast. I'd like to believe that I'm setting a positive example for DD w/r/t fitness.

Have a great weekend.
Catharine

[children]

Tammy,

I had exactly the same problems with DD. She would show a lot of "stickiness" to me whenever I thought about weaning her - I wanted to wean her so that I could start my tmt. I failed at 8m, 9m, and then 1yr of her age. Finally, I succeeded only at 15 m. I felt that she just "knew" my plan. Little kids know how to manipulate parents, of course. Your DS may sense that you are trying to have another kid, I am SURE! BTW, did you ask him whether he wanted a sibling?

Catharine,

There is one girl at "Feb 09 Moms" thread started ivf treatment again after giving birth recently b/c her DH will change job soon which will lead to no insurance coverage. She reminded me of you somehow, I was thinking if you plan to have second biological child, you may not want to wait for too long. NOw with the football season starts soon, you will be so busy on this too. Where you will find the time and energy go through all? You are all like superwomen to me!

Carolyn,

Hope everything is fine with you? As Catharine said, your advice to us is very helpful.

Speaking of advice, I have to say that swaddling did help a lot! Thanks to all of you who emphasized this to me. It's so easy when he is tightly wrapped, I never need to wait for his completely sleep anymore. Just feed him, burp him and put him down when he is quiet and contented. Now if I follow Carolyn (Ford's) method, I add a bit of playing/waking time after feeding. Still much easier to wrap him tight!

Oh, by the way, we finally got him to like sitting on the potty now. We got his first pee last week and first poop today! I am so crazy about keeping the kid's bottom "clean", pardon me to over emphasizing this.

Take care, everyone!

Yasmina

[children]

Catharine,

I think that I'd better discuss about our children here.

Thanks for asking, DS is getting very big, at 2m checkup, he was already 15 lbs and 24 in! He is very heavy for me b/c I am petite. Big sis just does greeting kisses to him, other times. She is mostly indifferent, but she gets concerned when DS cries for food. DS is now very quiet unless he is hungry or sleepy. He has made some progress in potty training, I know this sounds crazy - he does not poop in his diaper much anymore. I put him on the potty at least once a day in the evening before bedtime. but he starts to get it. He may be even cleaner than his sister. We will see...

DD starts to pick up a lot of words and even some sentences now. Unfortunately, in the mean time of gaining words in English, she is losing her French and Chinese. I can already foresee that she would speak neither French nor Chinese soon. Sad!

Alright, I can spend a whole day talking about them, I love them so much. I am sure you feel the same about your DD. Enjoy parenting!

Yasmina

[Catharine]

Hi All
Like everyone I've been busy I've ben following the posts but just haven't had much time to post lately.

How's everyone doing? Spring is here and so too are the high pollen counts. I love this time of year. Lots of color and untill I moved to the south I never really appreciated the color green before.

Yasmina-I agree with you on this is a better place to discuss our darling children (DC). I get to feeling guilty on the other board. Your DS is growing like a weed, you putting fertizer in his milk? I commend you on the potty training. I haven't even ventured in that territory. I briefly looked into it. I'm a wuss because I don't like the comments friends and family make on this topic. So I think I'll just wait a little bit. That's great about DD and putting words together forming sentences. I'm not so certain she'll completely loose the French and Chinese especially if mom and dad continue to use the languages throughout the daily routines. I'm using american sign language with DD in hopes that around 8 months she'll have associated her needs with specific signs that we continually use. Our goal is for her to tell us when she needs the diaper change, or more milk. The question is will we recognize her signs, hahahha

Update on fitness: on target Yippeee! Ahead of teammates. Big news one of our fullbacks is expecting I'm so happy for her and her DH. Happy for me too cause now there's an opening on the back line

Breastfeeding. Yes I'm still breastfeeding with supplementation. I pump before I take off for the gym in the mornings and DH feeds the milk to DD that morning. By the night feeding I'm dry as a bone though and we give DD formula. Also, she's been eating 'solids' during the day. Oatmeal ceral at moringing feeding, pureed vegetable at noon feeding and rice ceral late afternoon feeding. She's a real hoot. She's all about helping with the spoon to her mouth. So far she likes everything we've given her. My plan is to begin to make my own purees and freeze them in individual serving sizes. This is the extent of my domestic inclinations.

Tammy-thinking of you as you approach your tmt. crossed fingers

Caroline- how are things?

To all who read here a big shout out of Hello and wishing everyone all the best.

Cheers!
Catharine

[children]

I wrote this post Friday but could not finish attaching the pic.

Hi Catharine,

It's Friday and I am normally happier knowing that I don't have to get up early tomorrow!

About potty training, my goal was not to train DD or DS so early, but it comes as a byproduct. What I like to do is to put little infants on the potty to make them feel better. The books say that we should keep them diaper free for at least 10 min per day anyways. I figured putting them on the potty counts, right? My experience with DD was very rewarding, got her to pee or poop almost 100% of time without much waiting. For DS, I could get it 80% of the times that I put him on, unless I am willing to wait more than 5 min, which I usually don't have this much patience. I am very happy to find out that our DS learns so fast and he does not soil his diapers anymore - knock on wood, I have not had soiled diapers for at least two weeks! I even introduce some cotton reusable diapers in the evenings so that he could keep himself dry as long as possible. Lucky for me, both of my kids love sit on the potty at this stage, their big smiles encourage all of us to put them on!

On the other hand, I still have not been able to get DD diaper free in the night. She is 2 yrs and 2 months now.

Now here is the bad part, I still cannot get our DS to sleep through the night. The fault is mine, of course, because I know exactly what I should do - since I did it to our DS which worked well, but I am too lazy to do it. Another reason that I did not do it is that I am still having my parents here, if they here me to leave DS cry for more than one min, they will get up and interfere. So, I am going to get it done after they are gone, which is next week, sob...

Here I am putting some pics for entertaining purpose. Have a nice weekend.

[Catharine]

TGIF!
How's everyone this Friday? We're doing well.

Yasmina-what fabulous pix of your DD and DS. You have captured some tender moments between the two.

Tammy-sorry to hear of the loss of the family pet. I can only imagine how your son views it.

Quick update: a little less than 3 weeks left in the fitness challenge and it is definitely becoming more challenging for me to stay on track. The good news is I'm back into my pre-preg wardrobe, Yippee! DD continues to grow; I believe she must have recently had a growth spurt as one day she was swimming in an outfit and the next it was too small. How sad? sometimes she only gets to wear an outfit once. She's been teething for ahile now but her first teeth, bottom gum are breaking through. Thankfully they haven't been too much of a bother for her during her sleep hours, phew! Another milestone and a fun one is that she can sit among a mass of toys and be content to play by herself. It's so fun to watch her do so.

Well enough babbling. Everyone have a wonderful Spring weekend!
Catharine

[teachertam]

Catharine and Yasmina: Thanks for the kind words regarding the lost of my dear, Abbey. She was with me 18 years and you get very attached.

Catharine: Good for you getting back into your pre-pregancy wardrobe. I really need to start exercising regularly. Before I was pregnant, I would work out often, but now I am just out of the routine.

Yasmina: Those photos of your children are beautiful. I asked Andrew today if he wanted a little brother or sister. He shook his head, no. I'm not sure if he knew what I was talking about.

I will finally start taking the Femara on my upcoming cycle. It should start around 5/10. I am also going to meet with a new RE, as my other RE retired. This new RE comes to my Ob/Gyn's office once a month and I will see him there on 5/19. I have been taking progesterone supp. this cycle for 4 days now and so far have not have mid cycle spotting. I'm guessing that the low progesterone was messing up my cycle.

I better go check on Andrew. He must be in the other room with his Dad.

Take care,
Tammy

[children]

Hi everyone here,

DS started his daycare life last Friday and our parents left for China last Wed. I was home taking care of DS alone because DH was in Turkey and only got back Thursday. I had few days of high stress days. Fortunately, I did not kill any one of them. DS in general is a very content baby and I could put him down after feeding and he plays alone in his crib and falls into sleep all by himself. DD on the other hand, requires a hi maintenance, demands to be companied constantly, especially after school. Anyway, I am glad DH won't be out of town until next month.

Again, it's holiday season and we are thinking about going to France again since DH will be lecturing in Oxford in July which gives us one free ticket.

The good news that I mainly want to report is that DS magically slept through the night in the last couple of days. I noticed several nights before when he woke up he did not drank a lot and then easily fell back to sleep. Then he found his thumb to suck very efficiently when he did wake up. Next thing followed was to sleep all the way from 9 or 10 pm to 5 or 6 am. Yippee!!! This happened coincidently with that we sent him to daycare since last Friday, I wonder whether it was because the teachers left him alone when he cried or he just simply decided to sleep longer for the MaMa! Whatever it is, I am happy to be able to sleep through the night myself!

OK, as you can tell, I do have more energy than other days, but still, I need to get some work done, talk to you next time. Wish you all well!

Yasmina

[Catharine]

Better late than never!

a post, Happy Mother's Day ladies!

My weekend was filled with lots of activity. DD was baptised on saturday followed by a celebratory meal and family gathering. Then Sunday was mum's day as we know. I hope ya'll had a very lovely day. We started our day off with a 5 mile walk in the park, a lovely park at that. Then some quick errands before we headed off to gather at DH's brother's house for celebrating the mother's in the family This morning I'll take DD to spend time with her aunt all the way from Oregon. Lot's of activity indeed.

Thinking of everyone. Wishing all well.
Cheers!
Catharine

[Catharine]

Hi all
I hope this post finds everyone well.

Alot of new developments. Right around mother's day DD started sitting up on her own and then balancing on all fours, rocking to and fro. This forced us to move her from the craddle in our room to the crib in her room. She is used to the crib as that is where all her naps have occurred since just be fore 3 months of age...sadly though her sleep habits have regressed a bit as she has a hard time falling asleep and she awakes 3-4 hours after sleeping....one might think it is the teething [btw she now has two bottom teeth] but I believe it is the fact that she can no longer sense us in the room with her....I'm thankful for the Gina Ford books for giving me the resource/courage to put her down wishing her a good nights sleep and then walking down the hall. Yes, she is unhappy for 5 min, wailing away, with each dep breath a tug at my heart as I project onto her that she is in mental agony....but after the 5 mins she sleeps....I have to report sadly that I feel DH isn't on the same page with this tight schedule regardless of the books [a voice saying it is okay to do this, that we are not harming nor damaging our DD]. Perhaps I have not communicated well enough what the goals are and how to achieve them. Regardless the daily routine may be consistent, but not so when papa arrives home.....mmmm, now I have an understanding of a few of my parents issues...anyways, DD continues to thrive regardless of this seemingly set back....she is experimenting with moving her limbs, crawling is right around the corner...good-bye bouncer seats, hello playpen containment system and safety proofing the household...

So, we've been 'weaning' from a strictly liquid diet to a partial 'solid' puree diet with the baby foods. Oddly DD does not like the fruit purees. But she loves many of the vegetable ones, particulary spinach ones as well as the sweet potatos. She doesn't always like to eat a lot at once either. When she is done, she's tight lipped and head turned with eyes averted. Hmmm sounds like me some meals What I am having a hard time with is weaning her from nursing I probably enjoy it as much as she does. I enjoy that mental contection. I only nurse her twice aday now, morning when she wakes, and just before she goes to bed. No more during the day inbetween those times. Soon I will loose the bedtime one and this saddens me. It saddens me because once it is over, it's over we will no longer have this special bond. As my mother-in-law says, 'Oh just get over it will ya'. She's not a particularly warm woman if you know what I mean.

Everyone take care. I look forward to hearing each and everyone's updates.

Cheers!
Catharine